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cog_nate (4)

"All of the nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data accumulated in MBG’s electronic databases during the past 25 years are publicly available here. This system has over one million scientific names and 3.5 million specimen records." (Description from website.) Searchable by scientific or common name, the database includes brief descriptions, images and references (with some links to full text in Botanicus), and specimen and distribution lists that are available in Google Maps and Earth. Quite a nice resource for anyone interested in botany. [more inside]
posted by cog_nate on Mar 20, 2009 - 3 comments

In the First Person "is a free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of close to 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world. It lets you keyword search more than 700,000 pages of full-text by more than 18,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 4,300 audio and video files and 30,000 bibliographic records." (Description from website.) You can also browse by repository, collection, subject and several other ways.
posted by cog_nate on Aug 7, 2008 - 9 comments

Zotero is one of several free, open source research tools developed by the previously mentioned Center for History and New Media. It runs within Firefox and allows you to easily capture bibliographic information from a variety of online databases and catalogs, insert in-text citations and generate properly formatted bibliographies... if you're into that. (Also check out CHNM's fantastic projects page.)
posted by cog_nate on Jul 26, 2007 - 13 comments

"The USDA PLANTS database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories." Among the highlights are a list of culturally significant plants and a searchable image gallery you can submit photos to. Forestry Images is a similar USDA-supported site dedicated to silviculture.

If that isn't enough for you, click on over to the Germplasm Resources Information Network. There, you'll find a smorgasbord of information on virtually all the food varieties commercially raised in the US: where the germplasm is held, lists of species at each site, detailed descriptions of individual accessions (e.g., cultivars), even who owns the Red Silk Radish. If it grows and you can eat, drink, smoke or inject it, the USDA probably has it cataloged. And if they don't, search one of these.
posted by cog_nate on Dec 6, 2006 - 7 comments